Marriage or Divorce- Which will make you Fatter?

By Vatsal Anand
, Onlymyhealth editorial team

Sep 01, 2011

543214.8 / 5(4 Ratings)

Marriage or divorce brings about a stage of transition in a person’s life. Among other changes in your life, it also has an effect on your waistline. This change in weight has been found to be different for men and women after extended research by Ohio State University’s professors of Sociology, Dmitry Tumin and Zhenchao Qian.

The Body Mass Indices (BMI) of more than 10,000 people was studied after 2 years of marriage or divorce. It was observed that men found it difficult to maintain their waistlines after getting divorced. For women, it was the opposite; marriage made them gain weight.

The study was conducted on men and women who aged more than 30. Below this threshold, the impact of marriage or divorce on weight was relatively lesser. After the age of 30, the tendency to gain weight after divorce is more with advancing age. The older you are, the more pounds you put on after marriage or divorce. Marriage or divorce gives a sort of “shock” to people going through new transformation in their life. The probable cause for this is that the metabolism of aged people is not flexible enough to come to terms with this shock of transition in their life.

Married women have a greater role in their homes. This is the reason why they are more likely to gain weight after getting married, as they cannot find time to exercise and stay fit. On the other hand, men stand to gain health benefit from their marriage and they lose it after getting a divorce. The question of the reason behind such different outcomes in men and women due to marriage or divorce remains to be satisfactorily answered by this research. It has been speculated that typical gender roles played by men and women plays a part as discussed above.

Another important factor in making women happy in their marriage was whether the relationship was working well or not. With marital bliss, women tended to gain weight more than their single counterparts. Being unhappy without a spouse not only leads to loneliness, but also has a bad effect on physical health. This is for sure that both men and women who get married or divorced are more likely to have alterations in their weight compared to people who not married ever. There can be different reasons for different outcomes after a marriage or divorce.

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